“Illegal botox and hyaluronic acid injectors abound on social networks”, warns journalist Elsa Mari

“There are illegal injectors that are swarming and doing monstrous damage” among young people, worries Elsa Mari, journalist at Le Parisien and co-author of Generation Bistouri: investigation into the ravages of cosmetic surgery among young people (JC Lattes). Guest of Talk franceinfoWednesday, March 8, she explains that “women who have no qualifications, who are not doctors” perform injections of botox or hyaluronic acid when only a doctor can legally perform this type of act.

>> TESTIMONIALS. “My face was simply ruined”: the excesses of cosmetic surgery in young adults

These injectors, continues the journalist, “post superb photos on social networks offering knock-down prices – 150 euros for an injection instead of 300 or 400 euros at a doctor’s – and therefore penniless young people flock there”. Elsa Mari and her colleague Ariane Riou investigated these practices with disastrous health consequences for nine months, highlighting in particular the role of tout played by certain influencers and influencers on Instagram.

After the Covid, “the young people rushed into the cabinets”

“What some surgeons have told us, says Ariane Riou, it’s that young patients come straight into their practice with pictures of themselves with filters saying, ‘I want to look like that’.” Contacted by the two investigators of Le Parisien, the management of Instagram France explain that the beautifying filters are no longer “promoted on the platform”. “But the fact is, notes Ariane Riou, that we still see today many young people and influencers who use them, that they continue to swarm and create complexes among a good part of the users.

Through their investigation, Elsa Mari and Ariane Riou also show that far from erasing this obsession with physical perfection, the Covid-19 crisis, on the contrary, has accentuated it. “Young patients rushed to cosmetic surgery practices at the time of deconfinement”, says Ariane Riou who points in particular to the rise of videoconferencing. “We saw his reflection a lot more, we also spent a lot more time on social networks and in particular the young population who, suddenly, were bludgeoned with images of influencers who continued to stage themselves, she explains. Complexes have arrived, complexes that young people perhaps did not have before”she concludes.